The Problem: The problem here is that Roman slaves were assigned to take paying jobs, but would do them for free. The payers of the job would rather have slaves do the jobs for free than have to pay workers to do them, and the slaves usually did better at the jobs than most of the Roman citizens. As a result, there were many Roman citizens who were poor, jobless, and didn't have a pay because there were no more paying jobs left.
My Research:
Slaves did work like mining metals (silver, lead, tin and gold), farming, and skillful slaves might have weaved, been an accountant, or tutored their masters son.
Slaves were estimated to be over 1/3 of Rome's population
These slaves were used in jobs instead of paid workers because the slaves were free and they would do a better job since their master could tell them to, or even beat them until they did
A male slave would cost around 500 denarii
A female slave would cost around 6,000 denarii
A wealthy man might have owned 500 slaves, and an emperor might have owned 20,000
Citizens were often away at war and slaves were necessary to keep the farms going.
Slaves also might be used in chariot races or as gladiators
Outsourcing in the U.S Today: Outsourcing jobs is a problem that still goes on today in the United States. But, instead of outsourcing jobs from workers to slaves, the United States government is outsourcing jobs from the U.S to foreign countries like India, Indonesia, China, and many others. The government or even that company of these jobs are outsourcing jobs to different countries because those countries do the same work grade, but for less money than the workers in the U.S. Here are three jobs that are most commonly outsourced from the U.S to foreign countries:
Call Centers (An office set up to handle a large volume of telephone calls): This job is getting outsourced a lot because it is easy to train someone to handle incoming customer questions or complaints from numerous companies, and it is also easy to train someone good customer satisfaction.
Technical Support (A service provided by a hardware or software company for their customers who have problems with their products): This job is getting outsourced a lot because many software companies such as Apple or Microsoft have so many customers calling in all the time that they need to hire overseas so they can handle all the calls. Also, it is easy for anyone to answer the calls because they have a pre-set lists of questions that they ask the callers.
Accounting (The action, process, or job of keeping financial accounts): This job is getting outsourced a lot because these accounting companies can outsource jobs to what ever place that has people who can handle tasks of payroll, benefits, and bill processing. This saves the company time that it might use for the more important things in accounting like filling out accounting forms and monitoring budgets.
The United States's Solutions to Their Outsourcing Problem: Even though many jobs are being outsourced from U.S, the government is doing things to help with this problem and to keep jobs in America. President Obama signed several measures into law to encourage American business owners to keep their business in America so their businesses can create new jobs. The government also put 200 billion dollars in tax reliefs and intensives in 2011 to encourage American companies to make investments in their business and create new jobs. Another law that is now in place allows businesses to write off 100% of the costs of new investments in equipment in the United States, which means that any investments in equipment for businesses are free for these business owners. President Obama addressed outsourcing in his State of the Union address in January 2012. His plan is to reward companies that keep jobs in America with tax breaks and penalize companies that send jobs overseas with higher taxes. He is proposing tax incentives for companies that bring jobs back to America, and to discourage outsourcing, he is proposing that multi-national companies who have profits and jobs overseas pay a minimum tax.
This picture shows the top countries where U.S jobs are outsourced.
My Contacted Expert: My expert that I contacted is Kathleen McCarthy, a professor at the University of California Berkeley. She teaches many Roman subjects at her university, but she has a special interest in Roman slavery. Here are two websites with information about her:
My Email To Kathleen McCarthy: Dear Mrs. Kathleen McCarthy : Hello. My name is Jack Sonnefeld and I go to Nagel Middle School in Cincinnati, OH. In my Social Studies class at Nagel, we are doing a project about Rome and seeing if we could save Rome with today’s technology and understanding, specifically the problem of Roman slaves taking the jobs of workers, or outsourcing. I have done research, but I was wondering if you could answer some of my questions, since it says on your University of California Berkeley webpage that you are interested in Roman slavery. Here are my questions:
1. Why didn’t the Roman government get involved with controlling the number of slaves?
2. What did the Roman government do about the jobless Roman citizens who were making no money?
3. What steps did the Romans take to solve this problem?
Thank you for your time and any information you can give.
Sincerely, Jack Sonnefeld
Her 1st Response:
Dear Jack--
These are really good questions. I can see that you're thinking about the similarities and differences between Rome and the US today. One big general thing to know about the ancient world (both Greece and Rome) is that what people wanted was not so much a good job, but to be self-supporting by owning a farm (from which they would get their own food and be able to sell whatever was extra). Next best would be to support yourself by some other kind of business (such as trade or having shoe-maker's shop or a bakery). Free (non-slave) people who did not have enough wealth to support themselves in one of these ways were more likely to make a living by doing day labor (just getting hired for a specific project) than to be permanent employees. If this seems strange to you, slavery was a big reason why free people didn't want to be permanent employees: in a society with slaves, the idea of working for someone is too close to the idea of being owned by someone and people found this so degrading that they avoided it as much as they could.
So the problem of slaves doing jobs that could have gone to free Romans wouldn't have seemed like a problem to the Romans. Free people didn't really think of themselves as in competition with slaves for jobs. There were jobs in which slaves and free people worked side-by-side, but in these cases the free people were either working as day laborers or they owned the slaves they worked alongside. For example, the owner of a farm or an orchard might hire extra day laborers at harvest time to work with the slaves who worked there year-round or the shoemaker would own slaves who worked in his shop. There were some kinds of work that were considered slaves' jobs (being maids and cooks, taking care of children, working in the fields, mining) but most jobs were not well-defined as appropriate for only slaves or only free people. (In fact, many slaves were highly skilled and educated, so they did work like accounting, teaching, architecture, etc.)
So that's why the Roman government didn't think there needed to be controls on the number of slaves. From an outside perspective it seems that their economy might have been more productive if everyone were working all the time, but their own values and assumptions did not encourage them to think that they needed to find work for poor citizens. From time to time, when a lot of land came into the empire (when they had conquered a new province) they would try to help people out by giving them small plots of land to farm (sort of like homesteading in the US) -- again, you can see that they thought the answer was for people to have farms rather than to have jobs. There was no official "safety net," but the Roman government did give away some grain to the very poorest citizens and did try to stabilize the price of grain so that it would not become too expensive for those who had to buy it. There also were informal, private forms of support for poor people, especially a practice known as "patronage" in which a wealthier person helps or supports a poorer person. This might seem just like charity, but the way the Romans thought of it was that the poorer person (the client) was obligated to do things in return for the wealthier person (the patron): simple things like run errands but also things that would improve the status of the patron, such as vote for him if he ran for office, and show up at his doorstep in the morning so that everyone in the street could see how important he was (because of the big crowd of people at his door). You might think from what I said above about free people not wanting to be employees, that the Romans would find patronage degrading and in fact they did -- there are lots of places where people insult other people by saying that they are tied to a patron almost as if they were tied to a master. But given the range of possibilities that existed for the poor, this kind of relationship helped keep them (sometimes) from absolute starvation.
I hope this helps. I can't think of any books or websites on this that are specifically aimed at kinds, but if you have a teacher or parent helping you with this you might ask them to look at this book for more information: _Invisible Romans_ by Robert Knapp.
best of luck-- Kathleen McCarthy
Her 2nd Response:
Dear Jack-- After I sent that last message I walked home and thought more about your question. I think I now have a better way of explaining the way that Rome was not like the US today. What I said in my previous email is useful as background, but this is more about the question of outsourcing. In some ways, Roman slave-owners' choice to use slaves instead of free labor was like outsourcing because in both situations the owners/employers choose to employ people who are less likely to make demands (for example, to ask for higher pay or shorter hours or health insurance). In both situations there are workers (free people in Rome and unemployed workers in the US) who are placed at a disadvantage because the owners/employers think they are more expensive or more difficult to employ. The difference is that Roman slaves were not only LESS likely to make demands, but were not in a position to make demands at all -- they were owned by their masters and had no say in how they worked or what was expected of them. Because of the huge difference between being free and being a slave, and because (as I said in my earlier email) free people didn't want to be thought of as similar to slaves, the Roman workers who were left out by these choices did not see the slaves as their competition. Does that make sense?
Best, Kathleen McCarthy
Possible Solutions to Roman Outsourcing:
The Roman government could raise taxes on people who hire slaves, and give tax reliefs and intensives to people who hire paid workers for their jobs.
The Roman government could make a limit on how many slaves a person could own. This way business owners would have less slaves to do their work, so they would be forced to hire Roman citizens.
The Roman citizens who can't get hired because all jobs are taken by slaves could form a group of themselves and speak to the government to come up with solutions to this problem.
The Roman government could write off 100% of the costs of new investments in equipment for the businesses and companies who hire paid workers.
The Roman government could put a certain amount of money in tax reliefs and intensives to encourage Roman companies to make investments in their business and create new jobs, like the U.S government in 2011.
Final Solution to Roman Outsourcing: The Roman government should raise taxes on business owners who use slaves to do their jobs, and give tax reliefs and intensives to business owners who hire paid working Roman citizens. That way people who hire Roman citizens will pay less taxes, which means the number of business owners who hire Roman citizens will most likely increase, and these business owners will have more money that they saved on their lowered taxes. They can use this money to hire paid Roman citizens. The government should also make a law that limits the amount of slaves that one man could own. That way business owners that use slaves for their work would have a limited amount of slaves, so they would have to hire citizens.
<iframe src="http://prezi.com/embed/pnoida7aevik/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=no&autohide_ctrls=0" width="550" height="400" frameBorder="0"></iframe>
My Strategic Plan for Rome:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ies_0YXc3_cY3eXdf5XL591fh3lyeEkq8WfqvLBtXW8/edit
The Problem:
The problem here is that Roman slaves were assigned to take paying jobs, but would do them for free. The payers of the job would rather have slaves do the jobs for free than have to pay workers to do them, and the slaves usually did better at the jobs than most of the Roman citizens. As a result, there were many Roman citizens who were poor, jobless, and didn't have a pay because there were no more paying jobs left.
My Research:
Outsourcing in the U.S Today:
Outsourcing jobs is a problem that still goes on today in the United States. But, instead of outsourcing jobs from workers to slaves, the United States government is outsourcing jobs from the U.S to foreign countries like India, Indonesia, China, and many others. The government or even that company of these jobs are outsourcing jobs to different countries because those countries do the same work grade, but for less money than the workers in the U.S. Here are three jobs that are most commonly outsourced from the U.S to foreign countries:
The United States's Solutions to Their Outsourcing Problem:
Even though many jobs are being outsourced from U.S, the government is doing things to help with this problem and to keep jobs in America.
President Obama signed several measures into law to encourage American business owners to keep their business in America so their businesses can create new jobs. The government also put 200 billion dollars in tax reliefs and intensives in 2011 to encourage American companies to make investments in their business and create new jobs. Another law that is now in place allows businesses to write off 100% of the costs of new investments in equipment in the United States, which means that any investments in equipment for businesses are free for these business owners.
President Obama addressed outsourcing in his State of the Union address in January 2012. His plan is to reward companies that keep jobs in America with tax breaks and penalize companies that send jobs overseas with higher taxes. He is proposing tax incentives for companies that bring jobs back to America, and to discourage outsourcing, he is proposing that multi-national companies who have profits and jobs overseas pay a minimum tax.
My Contacted Expert:
My expert that I contacted is Kathleen McCarthy, a professor at the University of California Berkeley. She teaches many Roman subjects at her university, but she has a special interest in Roman slavery. Here are two websites with information about her:
http://classics.berkeley.edu/facCVs/kmccarthyCV.pdf
http://classics.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/person_detail.php?person=29
My Email To Kathleen McCarthy:
Dear Mrs. Kathleen McCarthy :
Hello. My name is Jack Sonnefeld and I go to Nagel Middle School in Cincinnati, OH. In my Social Studies class at Nagel, we are doing a project about Rome and seeing if we could save Rome with today’s technology and understanding, specifically the problem of Roman slaves taking the jobs of workers, or outsourcing. I have done research, but I was wondering if you could answer some of my questions, since it says on your University of California Berkeley webpage that you are interested in Roman slavery.
Here are my questions:
1. Why didn’t the Roman government get involved with controlling the number of slaves?
2. What did the Roman government do about the jobless Roman citizens who were making no money?
3. What steps did the Romans take to solve this problem?
Thank you for your time and any information you can give.
Sincerely,
Jack Sonnefeld
Her 1st Response:
Dear Jack--
These are really good questions. I can see that you're thinking about the similarities and differences between Rome and the US today. One big general thing to know about the ancient world (both Greece and Rome) is that what people wanted was not so much a good job, but to be self-supporting by owning a farm (from which they would get their own food and be able to sell whatever was extra). Next best would be to support yourself by some other kind of business (such as trade or having shoe-maker's shop or a bakery). Free (non-slave) people who did not have enough wealth to support themselves in one of these ways were more likely to make a living by doing day labor (just getting hired for a specific project) than to be permanent employees. If this seems strange to you, slavery was a big reason why free people didn't want to be permanent employees: in a society with slaves, the idea of working for someone is too close to the idea of being owned by someone and people found this so degrading that they avoided it as much as they could.
So the problem of slaves doing jobs that could have gone to free Romans wouldn't have seemed like a problem to the Romans. Free people didn't really think of themselves as in competition with slaves for jobs. There were jobs in which slaves and free people worked side-by-side, but in these cases the free people were either working as day laborers or they owned the slaves they worked alongside. For example, the owner of a farm or an orchard might hire extra day laborers at harvest time to work with the slaves who worked there year-round or the shoemaker would own slaves who worked in his shop. There were some kinds of work that were considered slaves' jobs (being maids and cooks, taking care of children, working in the fields, mining) but most jobs were not well-defined as appropriate for only slaves or only free people. (In fact, many slaves were highly skilled and educated, so they did work like accounting, teaching, architecture, etc.)
So that's why the Roman government didn't think there needed to be controls on the number of slaves. From an outside perspective it seems that their economy might have been more productive if everyone were working all the time, but their own values and assumptions did not encourage them to think that they needed to find work for poor citizens. From time to time, when a lot of land came into the empire (when they had conquered a new province) they would try to help people out by giving them small plots of land to farm (sort of like homesteading in the US) -- again, you can see that they thought the answer was for people to have farms rather than to have jobs. There was no official "safety net," but the Roman government did give away some grain to the very poorest citizens and did try to stabilize the price of grain so that it would not become too expensive for those who had to buy it. There also were informal, private forms of support for poor people, especially a practice known as "patronage" in which a wealthier person helps or supports a poorer person. This might seem just like charity, but the way the Romans thought of it was that the poorer person (the client) was obligated to do things in return for the wealthier person (the patron): simple things like run errands but also things that would improve the status of the patron, such as vote for him if he ran for office, and show up at his doorstep in the morning so that everyone in the street could see how important he was (because of the big crowd of people at his door). You might think from what I said above about free people not wanting to be employees, that the Romans would find patronage degrading and in fact they did -- there are lots of places where people insult other people by saying that they are tied to a patron almost as if they were tied to a master. But given the range of possibilities that existed for the poor, this kind of relationship helped keep them (sometimes) from absolute starvation.
I hope this helps. I can't think of any books or websites on this that are specifically aimed at kinds, but if you have a teacher or parent helping you with this you might ask them to look at this book for more information: _Invisible Romans_ by Robert Knapp.
best of luck--
Kathleen McCarthy
Her 2nd Response:
Dear Jack--
After I sent that last message I walked home and thought more about your question. I think I now have a better way of explaining the way that Rome was not like the US today. What I said in my previous email is useful as background, but this is more about the question of outsourcing.
In some ways, Roman slave-owners' choice to use slaves instead of free labor was like outsourcing because in both situations the owners/employers choose to employ people who are less likely to make demands (for example, to ask for higher pay or shorter hours or health insurance). In both situations there are workers (free people in Rome and unemployed workers in the US) who are placed at a disadvantage because the owners/employers think they are more expensive or more difficult to employ. The difference is that Roman slaves were not only LESS likely to make demands, but were not in a position to make demands at all -- they were owned by their masters and had no say in how they worked or what was expected of them. Because of the huge difference between being free and being a slave, and because (as I said in my earlier email) free people didn't want to be thought of as similar to slaves, the Roman workers who were left out by these choices did not see the slaves as their competition. Does that make sense?
Best, Kathleen McCarthy
Possible Solutions to Roman Outsourcing:
Final Solution to Roman Outsourcing:
The Roman government should raise taxes on business owners who use slaves to do their jobs, and give tax reliefs and intensives to business owners who hire paid working Roman citizens. That way people who hire Roman citizens will pay less taxes, which means the number of business owners who hire Roman citizens will most likely increase, and these business owners will have more money that they saved on their lowered taxes. They can use this money to hire paid Roman citizens. The government should also make a law that limits the amount of slaves that one man could own. That way business owners that use slaves for their work would have a limited amount of slaves, so they would have to hire citizens.
Bibliography:
"Roman Slaves." UNRV. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Jan. 2013.
<http://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-slavery.php>.
Mirza, Sumair, and Jason Tsang. "Slavery." Classics Unveiled. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Jan. 2013.
<http://www.classicsunveiled.com/romel/html/slavery.html>
"What Is the US Government Doing to Keep Jobs in America?" Outsourcing Work ENG101H. N.p., Feb.-Mar. 2012. Web. 17 Jan. 2013. <http://outsourcingworkeng101h.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/what-is-the-us-government-doing-to-keep-jobs-in-america/>.